Description
The Earth’s upper atmosphere highly sensitive to solar activity and the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction. Magnetospheric current systems close through the ionosphere and associated ion-neutral collisions, i.e. Joule heating, together can drastically modulate the spatially- and temporally-varying outer extent of the atmosphere. Unlike the many isolated in-situ measurements carried out by space missions so far, distributed neutral, plasma and magnetic field observations by a tetrahedron of micro-satellites, in tandem with precise tracking of the satellites’ orbital dynamics, offer the global view necessary to disentangle the complex transfers of energy and momentum through the tightly coupled magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system.
In this talk we outline a candidate mission architecture for the new ESA mini-Fast programme. This novel mission architecture seeks to obtain the first coordinated magnetic field, plasma and neutral measurements across a range of altitudes, latitudes and longitudes to resolve and characterise the energy entering the upper atmosphere, the pathways through which this is redistributed, and the coupling back to the geospace environment. A comprehensive ground segment will simultaneously relate information on the D- and E-region dynamics to the in-situ measurements.
In addition, we outline two enabling technology development studies relating to a fibre-coupled quantum diamond magnetometer for precise gradiometer measurements and a quantum-limited levitated nano-particle instrument for absolute measurements of the neutral atmosphere, which promise to enhance future mission concepts in this area and beyond.
